Monthly Archives: August 2012

Field Trip: Dinosaur State Park

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Last weekend we took a day trip to visit Dinosaur State Park, which is not too far south of Hartford, CT–about a 90-minute drive for us.

This is just a *fun* picture!

The main attraction is the dinosaur trackway. The Connecticut River Valley had great conditions for preserving dinosaur tracks, but not at all good conditions for preserving fossils. We’ve seen tracks before, at the Amherst Natural History Museum, at the northern end of the Valley, which boasts the largest collection of dinosaur tracks, many collected locally. But these tracks are right where the dinosaurs left them. It’ll give you goosebumps, if you think about it.

Dino tracks

The trackway is complemented by additional displays, which were all interesting to the adults in the family, too. In fact, we went on my husband’s birthday, and he chose the destination. He’s a big dinosaur fan. Isn’t it amazing that during our lifetimes, the dinosaur-bird link progressed from a crazy, derided theory to fact? The exhibits mentioned this as well, because one of the first people to examine these tracks when they were discovered was Yale University’s Dr. Ostrom, who revived the dinosaur-to-bird evolution theory.

This is a fossil of a fish (obviously!).

Fish fossil

The explanatory text said that the arching of the neck and back indicated the fish entered and died in toxic waters.

The park includes nature trails, too, so after we explored the inside, we took a walk outside. We kept seeing this red dragonfly, and finally he posed quite nicely for me.

Dragonfly

He’s not quite as large as his prehistoric counterparts, but still, quite pretty.

This trip included a lot of time in the car, but it was a nice day for a picnic lunch, and an interesting destination, with lots of information about local (-ish, to us) geology and the always-big pull of dinosaurs. Worth a day trip!

The Times Tables

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Sometimes, you just need some flashcards.

My oldest, who returns to school this week, began learning multiplication two years ago in the third grade. But they don’t require them to memorize them anymore, apparently. This summer, I decided he was memorizing those multiplication tables before starting fifth grade. Mind you, his grades in math are fine. But as he moved into division this past year, I could see it was harder than it had to be. Do you remember chanting the times tables as a class? It was boring as anything, but knowing those facts make everything that comes after easier. My son, however, was really resistant to memorizing them. Eventually, early this summer, he was able to verbalize why: “I want to figure out the answer on my own.”

A-ha! He thought that memorization was somehow akin to cheating. I picked a neutral time–we were alone in the car together, on the way to the supermarket–to try to explain my reasoning to him. I told him that if he didn’t understand the process of multiplication, if he didn’t realize that 8×3 was the same as 8+8+8, then I wouldn’t want him memorizing the facts. Facts without understanding is no good. But he does understand the process, and now it was time to know these facts so well that his brain isn’t wasting time with 8+8+8, it just spits out 24. Just like he doesn’t have to start from A just to know what letter comes after T–he memorized the alphabet in order a long time ago without even thinking about it. That’s not cheating, he agreed.

He thought this over for a bit, and then he said, “I think writing them out would be a good way to memorize them. Often when I write myself a note so I don’t forget something, I end up not needing the note because writing it down made me remember it.” I told him I thought that was an excellent start, and chose not to remind him that I’d suggested this months ago and he refused. He needed to understand why he was doing this, and I was glad he came up with this strategy on his own.

Once he understood, the rest was relatively easy, because he was on board. I’d read somewhere to group the like tables, so we started with the 2s (easy), and followed that with the 4s and 8s. He wrote out the table, and I quizzed him with flash cards. I got out our Cuisenaire rods and we grouped them different ways to see how 2s, 4s, and 8s are related. Then we moved on to 3s, then 6s, then 9s, and finally 12s. I reminded him to use what he knew–if 7×2 is 14, then 7×12 has to end in a 4. If he wasn’t coming up with 12×8, I’d ask him 10×8 and then 2×8 before repeating 12×8. We left the 7s for last, because they’re not really related to anything else, but we’d covered everything in them by then, at least. (5s, 10s, and 11s didn’t need much work at all.)

They’ll need to be reinforced, of course, to make sure they stick. Sometimes I just ask him multiplication questions out of the blue, which has led to my youngest randomly stringing numbers together into math problems for us to answer. I wouldn’t have said I’m a fan of rote memorization, but it turned out I felt strongly that he should know these, really know them. Again, if he didn’t understand what multiplication is, I wouldn’t want him memorizing facts with no understanding. But I can also remember having to memorize oral presentations when I was just a little older than he is, and it certainly trained my mind in a certain way. Maybe next summer we’ll memorize some poetry…

A Plan, of Sorts

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[Insert your own metaphor here] The other day at the beach, it was so clear we had a great view of Block Island offshore. But this is rare.

As I described in the last post, I’m not one to plan the learning step by step. But I’m not unschooling, either. That’s where I thought I’d fall, when I started homeschooling way long ago. The reality, though, was that my oldest wanted and needed a bit more structure. He liked workbooks. (Me? They give me hives.) He liked seeing tangible progress of work completed. He was five. I adjusted. I even bought a complete curriculum for his first grade year, but I ended up changing and adding so much that I was going to take a completely different approach the next year, except then he began school.

This time around, with my younger son, I’ve gathered some books and I’m keeping it loose, with a very short list of items that need to be completed daily. Because three years of school has him convinced he hates math, I started him with Life of Fred over the summer. The addition in the early books is below his current ability, but those books have reinforced some items that just didn’t stick at school, such as telling time and the order of the days of the week and months of the year. My only math requirement to begin the year is a chapter of Fred a day. I know without a doubt that math will be included in all the other subjects we do, in his daily life, and in his project work. This child needs to see the practical use of something; he’s not going to learn anything just because somebody tells him to. (And I don’t think he will ever be asking for workbooks.)

My state doesn’t even require we teach history, just geography and civics. Perhaps this is why he apparently learned no history through second grade. (My older son had a completely different–and better, in my opinion–second grade experience at the same school with a different teacher, but that was before they revamped the second grade. He did learn history, though. We’d already covered many of the same topics in our first grade homeschool, but still.) Nevertheless, I asked him if he’d like to start at the beginning, in the ancient world. He’s very enthusiastic about learning more about the ancient Egyptians. I bought the first volume of Story of the World to help us tie everything together in historical context, something I was having a hard time doing myself with books that focused just on Egypt. I’m not using the activity books, though, since having somebody else decide what to do takes all the fun out of it! We’ll be supplementing and going more in depth with library books, the local art museum (which has a wonderful collection of ancient art), and whatever related projects my son decides he wants to pursue. We’ll move on when he’s ready.

He also asked to do chemistry experiments. We’ll be using Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, Amazing Kitchen Chemistry Projects You Can Build Yourself, and library resources (including a science dictionary for any terms that need to be looked up).

And finally, we’ll be incorporating project time.

I’m keeping the extras light. I think he needs to unwind from school and rediscover how much he likes learning things when he has a choice of what to learn. His knee-jerk response to anything schoolish is “I hate it” and “it’s boring.” After years of struggling to get him up and on a bus, I don’t plan on spending most of our homeschooling time trying to get him in a car on time. We have one co-op day, and I’m really excited to be part of a great group. We are planning on enrolling him in karate; we think this might be a very good fit for our intense, oppositional child. (Team sports? He can’t stand them.) And that’s about it, at least to start the year.

We will begin where we are and see what develops, maintaining flexibility at all times. That’s the main gist of any plan I’m making.

“But You’re Supposed To Know Everything!”

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I’ve been (sort of) planning the two classes I’ll be teaching at our homeschool co-op this fall, which has led me to realize that I basically evolved my teaching style by instinct and default almost 20 years ago. Most of my paid jobs—and several unpaid ones—have been in what I think is still called “nonformal education,” that is, education that doesn’t take place in a school setting. Summer camps, environmental education programs, Girl Scout programs, after-school programs, urban outreach…I did lots of that sort of thing, usually creating my own program rather than following somebody else’s script.

I began planning my own programs primarily while working in environmental education, and I think that contributed to how I planned. Firstly, I was the sort of “teacher” who liked to plan more activities than I’d need, so I could tailor what we did to the group and circumstances. I also liked to leave room and space for the unexpected discovery and the emergent interests of the group. Right from the beginning, it seemed backwards to strictly plan everything without an important component: the kids. (Or, sometimes, adults.) Instinctually, I wanted the learning to be a group-tailored activity, not a top-down affair.

Sea star: Ruthless carnivore

Secondly, by default, I couldn’t be afraid of saying “I don’t know.” I was never going to be an ace naturalist, who could identify every native tree, shrub, wildflower and weed, every track, every sign, every fleeting bird call. My greatest strength as a group leader was my enthusiasm. This world is amazing! The wonder and drama and beauties—both minute and grand—of the natural world still thrill me. It never got old, no matter how many times I hauled my touch-tank of local marine life into an after school program and told the gripping story of how a sea star wears down its bivalve prey until it cracks open the shell just enough to slip its stomach—just its stomach!—inside the shell and digest the clam or scallop or mussel in its own home before slurping it out again. How is that not fascinating? My genuine passion is my strength.

Knowing everything, though? I never even thought I could. One of my favorite stories about my nonformal “teaching” is from a summer I spent as the nature director at a day camp run by a prestigious private school. Many of the campers and counselors were students at the school. One day two girls, about 10 or 11 years old, came to find me and asked, “If only the female mosquitoes bite us, what do boy mosquitoes eat?”

“That’s a good question,” I said. “I don’t know, but let me show you my shelf of guide books…”

“But you’re the teacher!” one of them exclaimed. “Yeah, you’re supposed to know everything!” her friend chimed in.

I wondered if that was really what they were learning at their expensive private school, that teachers knew everything? “Nobody knows everything,” I told them, “but I know how you can find out.” I walked them to my storage area, showed them the shelf of resource books, suggested a couple that might have the answer, and left them to it. Not too long afterwards, they came to me with a book. (This, of course, was in the days before 11-year-olds carried the Internet in their pockets.)

“Male mosquitoes suck nectar, like butterflies!” they told me. I’ve never, ever forgotten that. I hope they haven’t either. I could teach a kid what boy mosquitoes eat and answer one day’s question, or I can teach a kid how to find out the answer for herself and enable her to answer anything. Oh, and I only lasted one summer at that nature director job. I thought wandering through the woods overturning rocks was a fine way to spend some time during the summer, even on more than one afternoon. The camp director felt I wasn’t imparting enough facts and I repeated the same activities too much—I had a tendency to let the kids enjoy themselves and just be in the woods (on summer vacation!). We mutually agreed that our education philosophies didn’t match.

I’ve held onto to those two basic tenets of “teaching” all the way throughout all those nonformal education jobs and into parenting as well: leave space for the group’s interests and the unexpected, and don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, but here’s how we can find out” (or “let’s try it,” or any variation thereof). It’s why I can’t really plan more than a basic outline of ideas and supplies for those co-op classes. I’m just there to guide the discovery; the ultimate path is up to all of us together.